As a result of several recent controversies, there has been a lot of talk and debate in various fandoms about what constitutes plagiarism. Some have argued, for instance, that it is hypocritical to accuse a fan author of plagiarism for copying narration and/or dialogue from another source, when the whole concept of fan fiction depends on borrowing ideas and characters from other sources -- what's the difference?

If one thing has become clear in the midst of the chaos, it is that the definition of plagiarism itself is by no means clear in many people's minds. Indeed, in the course of at least one fandom debacle, it wobbled about like a Weeble on a bender, so I would be presumptuous to imagine that I can give an absolute and all-encompassing definition here.

The point is, regardless of what the dictionary says or how lawyers may interpret it, what is most commonly perceived and understood to constitute plagiarism? What is actually likely to get you in trouble with authors, scriptwriters, and publishers both on and off the Net? After taking a straw poll of several professional writers and editors, I believe I can offer some useful suggestions.

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WHAT IS NOT GENERALLY CONSIDERED PLAGIARISM

Note the use of the word "generally". Technically, fan fiction is already on a slippery slope when it comes to the plagiarism issue, and still a subject of legal debate: so it would be very unwise of me (or anyone else) to suggest that any fanfic author is, or ever can be, wholly protected from accusations of plagiarism. As the case of J.K. Rowling and Nancy Stouffer illustrates, the only way to really be sure that you won't ever be sued by an angry author claiming that you have stolen her ideas is not to write at all.

However, there are a few things you can usually get away with when writing fanfic -- things which may or may not make the original author happy if they find out, but which at least will probably not get them angry enough to sue.

1. Using another author's setting, props, and characters in your own work, so long as you make plain (or it is widely understood) that they belong to the original author and were not created by you, is NOT generally considered plagiarism.

For the purpose of example, let me take the book Roman Nights by Dorothy Dunnett (which I happen to have in front of me). This is a mystery novel, one in a series of mysteries which feature Dunnett's affable portrait painter/spy/sleuth Johnson Johnson. If I were to decide that I utterly adored Johnson (which I do) and wanted to write a fanfic about him using a plot, narration and dialogue of my own invention, that would most likely be fine. So long as I stuck a disclaimer at the beginning to make sure everybody knew Johnson was Dunnett's creation and not mine, and so long as it stayed fanfic and I didn't try to sell it for profit, I would probably not be accused of plagiarism.

2. Quoting lines and paragraphs written by another author, so long as you make it absolutely clear that you are quoting, frame the quotation in such a way as to distinguish it from your own writing, and give credit to the original author and source, is NOT generally considered plagiarism. (This is why songfics are not generally considered plagiaristic, especially when the song is so popular that most people would recognize it even without credit.)

As an example, going back to Roman Nights, there is a gorgeous bit of metaphor about a third of the way through the book. Here it is:

"If a Roman junction during one of the four rush hours is suicide, a Roman junction while the traffic lights are off resembles nothing so much as a herd of myopic rhinoceroses meeting eye to eye with a herd of dim-witted elephants and attempting to copulate." -- Dorothy Dunnett, Roman Nights (pg. 76, Arrow Books paperback edition)

If I decided to write a fanfic about Severus Snape going to Rome on a top-secret mission for Dumbledore, and I wanted to put this quote (including the attribution of the quote to Dorothy Dunnett and the name of the book in which it appears) at the beginning of the chapter before launching into my narrative about Snape, I would not be plagiarizing Dunnett. I would simply be quoting her. If I were publishing a story for profit I would have to ask the permission of Dunnett's estate before using the quote, and possibly pay for it; but since I'm only writing fanfic, the simple acknowledgement of author and source at the end of the quote should be OK.

3. Using material in narration or dialogue which is obviously a quotation, either because the original source is widely known (i.e. Shakespeare) or because you actually state in the narrative that you are quoting, is NOT generally considered plagiarism.

"As he waited for the traffic jam to clear, Snape was reminded of a passage in a book he'd once read: "...a Roman junction while the traffic lights are off resembles nothing so much as a herd of myopic rhinoceroses meeting eye to eye with a herd of dim-witted elephants and attempting to copulate.' Now that he was actually witnessing it, he couldn't help thinking wryly that it was true."

That may be lame and uninspired prose (and bad characterization -- can you see Snape reading Muggle mystery novels?) but it isn't plagiarism as such. It could be dangerous if I don't put a note at the beginning or the end of the story stating exactly which book Snape got that quotation from, because there is still the risk that somebody might think I had made up the book (and therefore the quote) myself. But provided I do include a proper footnote/disclaimer, very few people would accuse me of plagiarism.

4. Mimicking the particular style (sentence structure, vocabulary, narrative "voice") of another author for the purpose of telling a story similar to one that would be told by that author is NOT generally considered plagiarism.

If I wrote a fanfic sequel to Roman Nights using the same characters, the same narrator, and the same narrative style, it would generally be considered a pastiche of Dunnett and not an act of plagiarism. Even though I was trying to write "like Dunnett", the words and dialogue and plot of the story would still be my own original creation, and therefore OK in a not-for-profit medium like fanfic.

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With me so far? Good. Most of you are probably happy now, because you have realized that you have covered your bases and that your fanfics are unlikely to get you into trouble.

Now for the bad news.

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WHAT IS GENERALLY CONSIDERED PLAGIARISM

I trust that I don't need to tell anyone reading this essay that if you take a story or book written by another person, copy it out, and put your own name on it so that people will think you wrote it instead of the original author, that is plagiarism in its most classic and inexcusable form. So if I typed out the entire text of Roman Nights, changed the title, put "by R.J. Anderson" on it, and posted it to the web, Dorothy Dunnett's estate would have every right to sue my pants off.

However, you may not realize that you can be just as easily accused of plagiarism for doing something much less extreme.

Borrowing sentences or paragraphs from another author's writing and mixing them in with your own work, in such a way that the average reader cannot tell the difference between the parts the other author wrote and the parts you wrote, IS generally considered plagiarism.

Let me put that another way, so it's absolutely clear.

If you take parts of somebody else's story and put them in your own story (whether it's two thousand words or two hundred words or only twenty) and you do it in such a way that nobody would know that those words weren't yours unless they got suspicious and hunted through the original author's work until they found the passage you "borrowed" -- then you are very likely to be accused of plagiarism.

This is the kind of thing that gets fan authors in serious trouble.

Please note that this kind of borrowing would be considered plagiarism by the vast majority of authors and editors EVEN IF you put a disclaimer at the beginning of the story saying, "I took some of the ideas for this chapter from Roman Nights by Dorothy Dunnett." Acknowledging that you have a debt to, or were inspired by, the other author still does not make it clear to your readers that you are using the other author's words and not your own; it does not plainly indicate which parts of your narrative are "borrowed" and which really belong to you.

Also be aware that this kind of borrowing will be considered plagiarism by most authors and editors EVEN IF you have the best intentions in the world and mean no harm or offense to the original author. Good intentions cannot solve the problem you create when you allow a situation to develop in which someone else's work can be mistaken for your own.

The only way you can safely get away with borrowing other people's writing and mixing it with yours is BY ASKING AND OBTAINING THE PERMISSION OF THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR. Fair is fair, after all. That particular arrangement of words, phrases and sentences -- no matter how much you may love it and want to share it with others -- is not your property. It is the property of that other author, and they deserve credit for the hard work they put into it.

If you take another author's words without their express permission, and mix them with your own in such a way that the average reader could mistake their words for yours, you are -- knowingly or inadvertently -- stealing, and you are deceiving your readers into believing that you are a better writer than you actually are. Whether you meant to or not, you are taking credit you don't deserve.

Don't do it.

Please.

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SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

It is true, as many have pointed out, that fan fiction borrows concepts and characters created by other writers. However, fanfic itself is not generally considered to be plagiarism as such, because the readers and writers of fan fiction typically know (even without the presence of a disclaimer) which characters and concepts belong to the original creator. There is, therefore, little danger that readers will mistake the original writer's creations for those of the fan author, or vice versa.

An author may not really like the idea of fan fiction being written around her work; she may choose to avoid reading any such stories because she doesn't want to muddle her own creative vision or come across something distasteful to her; but she is not, in general, going to sue you or otherwise make trouble for you just for borrowing her characters and her world to write about. (There are exceptions to this rule, however; so it is wise to make sure your author of choice is not fiercely hostile to fanfic before you go writing stories set in her creative universe. Anne Rice and Anne McCaffrey, for instance, are notoriously opposed to fanfic).

If, however, an author comes across your story and finds that you have borrowed her words in such a way that other people are likely to give you the credit for writing them, she is going to be upset. And rightly so. The best you can hope for in that case is a cease-and-desist message from the author, which will entail a lot of backpedalling and rewriting on your part to fix the error. The worse case scenario is a lawsuit, which will entail a lot of money, time, and public humiliation. In either case, you need to ask yourself, is it really worth it?

As an author of both fan fiction and original fiction, and a friend of professional authors and editors, I believe that it is very important for every member of the fan fiction writing community to take the risk of being accused of plagiarism seriously, and to exercise extreme caution when we use other people's material in our own work.

The best way to protect ourselves, I feel, is to follow the simple motto, "If in doubt, leave it out." If you can't be sure that you have thoroughly and properly shown the difference between another author's work and your own in such a way that the original author would be satisfied, and if you are too shy or fearful to ask the author's permission to use their words in a way that they find acceptable, then don't do it.

In the end, you can never lose by NOT copying from another author. Indeed, the more original you strive to be in your narration and dialogue, the more you win; because in that case, all the credit your fans may give you for being witty, clever, eloquent and inventive will truly be your own.

R.J. Anderson has been writing fanfic since 1982 and doing it online since 1987. She has been involved in Trek, Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, X-Files, Harry Potter and now Alias fandom, and shows no signs of growing up in the near future.